The Question Concerning Technology � and Other Essays X; MARTIN HEIDEGGER Translated and with an Introduction by WILLIAM LOVITT GARLAND PUBLISHING, INC. New York & London 1977 THE QUESTION CONCERNING TECHNOLOGY AND OTHER ESSAYS. English translation copyright @ 1977 by Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 10 East 53rd Street, New York, N.Y. 10022. Published simultaneously in Canada by Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited, Toronto. Designed by Eve Callahan This edition published by arrangement with Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA Heidegger, Martin, 1889-1976. The question concerningtechnology, and other essays. Translations of essays which Originally appeared in Die Technik und die Kehre, Holzwege, and Vortrage und Aufsatze. CONTENTS: The question concerning technology.-The turning.-The word of Nietzsche: "God is dead". [etc.] 1. Ontology-Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Tech­ nology-Addresses, essays, lectures. 1. Title. B3279.H48Q47 1977 193 77-87181 ISBN 0-8240-2427-3 Contents Acknowledgments vii Preface ix Introduction xiii PART I The Question Concerning Technology 3 The Turning 36 PART II The Word of Nietzsche: "God Is Dead" 53 PART III The Age of the World Picture 115 Science and Reflection 155 Acknowledgments I am greatly indebted to Professor J. Glenn Gray for initiating me into the demanding art of translating Heidegger and for our close association over the past two years, in the course of which his meticulous reviewing of my translations for this volume has rescued me from many dangers but left me largely free to build my own way. To Professor Gray, as well as to Professor Heidegger himself, lowe thanks for access to the unpublished transcripts of two seminars conducted by Heidegger in France: "Seminaire tenu par Ie Professeur Heidegger sur Ie Differenzschrift de Hegel" and "Semina ire tenu au Thor en septembre 1969 par Ie Professeur Martin Heidegger." The latter has helped provide the perspective for my Introduction, and both have enhanced my understanding of the five essays included here. Those on the faculty and staff at California State University, Sacramento, who have helped and supported me in my work on this volume are too numerous to be acknowledged each individ­ ually, but I am particularly grateful to my colleague in German, Professor Olaf K. Perfler, for hours of intense conversation in which many secrets of the German idiom were revealed to me. To Moira Neuterman, who was my typist from the beginning of this project almost to the last, and to Mary Ellyn McGeary, viii Acknowledgments her successor, are due my special thanks for exceptional skill and care. Every page of this book owes its final shaping in very large measure to the imaginative and rigorous scrutiny of my wife, Dr. Harriet Brundage Lovitt, who, though trained in another discipline, has now become indisputably a scholar and interpreter of Heidegger in her own right. WILLIAM LOVITT Preface The essays in this book were taken with Heidegger's permission from three different volumes of his works: Die Technik und die Kehre (Pfullingen: Gunther Neske, 1962); Holzwege (Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 1952); and Vortriige und Aufsiitze (Pful­ lingen: Gunther Neske, 1954). liThe Question Concerning Tech­ nology" is contained in both Die Technik und die Kehre and Vortriige und Aufsiitze. In Die Technik und die Kehre the following prefatory note appears regarding the two essays, "The Question Concerning Technology" ("Die Frage nach der Technik") and "The Turning" ("Die Kehre"): Under the title "Insight into That Which Is," the author gave, on December 1, 1949, in the Club at Bremen, four lectures, which were repeated without alterations in the spring of 1950 (March 2S and 26) at Biihlerhohe. The titles were "The Thing ["Das Ding"], "En­ framing" ["Das Gestell"], "The Danger" ["Die Gefahr"], "The Turning" ["Die Kehre"]. * The first lecture was given in an expanded version on June 6, 1950, before the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts. (See Vortriige und Aufsiitze, 1954, pp. 163 ff.)t * Throughout the translations in this volume parenthetical elements interpolated by me are shown in brackets, while those present in the author's original text are given in parentheses. t "The Thing" has been published in Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), pp. 165-186. x Preface The second lecture was given on November 18, 1955, also in an expanded version, under the title "The Question Concerning Tech­ nology," in the series entitled "The Arts in the Technological Age." (See Vortriige und Aufsiitze, 1954, pp. 13 ff.). The present volume repeats this text unaltered. The third lecture remains still unpublished. The fourth lecture, "The Turning," is published here for the first time according to the first unaltered version. At the end of Holzwege Heidegger makes the following ob­ servations concerning "The Word of Nietzsche: 'God Is Dead' " ("Nietzsches Wort 'Gott ist tot' It) and "The Age of the World Picture ("Die Zeit des Weltbildes") : "The Word of Nietzsche : 'God Is Dead' ": The major portions were delivered repeatedly in 1943 for small groups. The content is based upon the Nietzsche lectures that were given between 1936 and 1940 during five semesters at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau. These set themselves the task of understanding Nietzsche's thinking as the consummation of Western metaphysics from out of Being. "The Age of the World Picture": The lecture was given on June 9, 1938, under the title "The Establishing by Metaphysics of the Modern World Picture," as the last of a series that was arranged by the Society for Aesthetics, Natural Philosophy, and Medicine at Freiburg im Breisgau, and which had as its theme the establishing of the modern world picture. The appendixes were written at the same time but were not delivered. Of all the essays in Holzwege Heidegger remarks: In the intervening time these pieces have been repeatedly revised and, in some places, clarified. In each case the level of reflection and the structure have remained, and so also, together with these, has the changing use of language. And at the end of Vortriige und Aufsiitze Heidegger gives the following notes : "The Question Concerning Technology" ["Die Frage nach der Technik"]: Lecture held on November 18, 1955, in the main audi­ torium of the Technische Hochschule, Munich, in the series "The Arts in the Technological Age," arranged by the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts under the leadership of President Emil Preetorius; published in volume III of the Yearbook of the Academy (ed. Clem­ ens Graf Podewils), R. Oldenbourg, Munich, 1954, pp. 70 ff. Preface xi "Science and Reflection" ["Wissenschaft und Besinnung"J: Lecture, in its present version given in August, 1954, before a small group, in preparation for the above-mentioned conference in Munich. WILLIAM LOVITT Sacramento, California Introduction To read Heidegger is to set out on an adventure. The essays in this volume-intriguing, challenging, and often baffling the reader-call him always to abandon all superficial scanning and to enter wholeheartedly into the serious pursuit of thinking. Every philosopher demands to be read in his own terms. This is especially true of Heidegger. One must not come to him with ready-made labels, although these are very often given. Thus Heidegger is not an "existentialist." He is not concerned centrally or exclusively with man. Rather he is centrally concerned with the relation between man and Being, with man as the openness to which and in which Being presences and is known. Heidegger is not a "determinist." He does not believe that man's actions are completely controlled by forces outside him or that man has no effective freedom. To Heidegger man's life does indeed lie under a destining sent from out of Being. But to him that destin­ ing can itself call forth a self-orienting response of man that is real and is a true expression of human freedom. Again, Heidegger is not a "mystic." He does not describe or advocate the experi­ encing of any sort of oneness with an absolute or infinite. For him both man and Being are finite, and their relationship never dissolves in sheer oneness. Hence absolute, infinite, or the One can appear to him only as abstractions of man's thinking, and not as realities of essential power. xiv Introduction Heidegger is not a "primitive" or a "romantic." He is not one who seeks escape from the burdens and responsibilities of con­ temporary life into serenity, either through the re-creating of some idyllic past or through the exalting of some simple ex­ perience. Finally, Heidegger is not a foe of technology and science. He neither disdains nor rejects them as though they were only destructive of human life. The roots of Heidegger's thinking lie deep in the Western philosophical tradition. Yet that thinking is unique in many of its aspects, in its language and in its literary expression. In the development of his thought Heidegger has been taught chiefly by the Greeks, by German idealism, by phenomenology, and by the scholastic theological tradition. These and other elements have been fused by his genius of sensitivity and intellect into very individual philosophical expression. In approaching Heidegger's work the reader must ask not only what he says, but how he says it. For here form and content are . inextricably united. The perceptive reader will find at hand in the literary form of each one of these essays many keys to un­ lock its meaning. He will also find the content of each continually shaping for itself forms admirably suited to its particular ex­ pression.